My jaw nearly hit the ground when I saw one of the badgeware company CEOs actually write, what most badgeware critics already know: they want you to buy a commercial license because you find the forced UI advertising unpallatable.
From Dave Rosenberg (Mulesource) blog on “Licensing in London“:
So, if you use Mule in your software product
and sell it commercially, then you are required to either make a
licensing deal with us or keep the �powered by Mule� logo visible. Just
as so many other things in OSS are confusing, it appears that this too
has created some consternation-primarily because people want to embed
Mule in their products and couldn’t quite make sense of how the
attribution would work.
My answer was simple. You make a deal with us for a commercial license and then you do whatever you want.
At least someone is finally admitting this is one of the intents of badgeware. Even if we disagree, it is important to say with genuine sincerity: thank you for being honest about why you use badgeware.
The bright side is at least these vendors are finally getting some pushback and having to explain their licenses. This is important… People need to know what they’re getting themselves into: forced advertising for vendors using a license that is, arguably, NOT an open source license. Badgeware (even **if** the OSI approves it) has implications for customers, developers, partners; in short, EVERYONE. People need to know that this is the kind of company/project/license they are dealing with.